Full welfare for life? You mean Social Security and Healthcare? Perhaps we just need to make those programs work properly. If we also had some basic legal limits on the way salaried and non-salaried employees work and how much of a corporations tax-deductible costs can go to C-level salaries instead of everyone else's salaries, much of the need for unions would go away.
Unions have outlived their usefulness in the American economy. Today, their primary effect is to destroy and bankrupt everything they touch. GM paid many workers full salary to do nothing for years because their union contract wouldn't allow them to fire people. I'm sure those "workers" were happy with what the union did for them. But those of us who don't get a sweet union deal have to live with a bankrupt state of California that can't negotiate their union labor contracts, a broken school system run by the country's most powerful union that resists all reform (except "more money for schools"!), bankrupt unionized automakers, a stale unionized postal system that is going broke, and even union grocery stores with long lines because the union resists putting in automatic checkout machines that they fear would take their jobs.
And when the unions inevitably kill their host, they still aren't made to suffer. The federal government steps in and guarantees their pensions and salaries. Imagine what kind of incentives that gives the union leaders in future negotiations. Oh, and union workers will have lower taxes on their health insurance than non-union workers under the Obama health care plan even though union workers make more money on average, just to rub a little salt in the wound.
In 1900, unions were a great idea. Now they are poison.
I agree, in general, as a former Teamster working for UPS. I moved out of the union and became a supervisor for UPS. It was hell, where I couldn't penalize any worker for showing up late, for not working, for leaving early. Some workers could not be motivated, period, as 'senior' union employees told them the tricks that made it so they didn't have to work hard. Meanwhile, my trucks were late to pull, meaning I got my ass chewed out, because I regularly had 3/10 employees skip work. The only way I could get things going was to literally bribe them with popsicles (hot warehouse in summer) and energy drinks from my own pocket $$$. The worst was having to give skilled positions to the most senior, rather than the most capable. Made for a nightmare operating environment.
However, my dad is a union employee - he works on elevators. It's a small union, and it doesn't have a bunch of 'no penalization' bullshit, and no seniority promotion clauses. The benefit it offers are a standardized health care package, so he can keep the same healthcare and retirement regardless of employer (there are only a few elevator companies anyway). The union also guarantees overtime. He can still get canned if he starts skipping work, doesn't perform etc, it just takes legitimate documentation to have happen.
There are upsides and downsides, but I believe a well run union is a good thing, but in general unions are not well run and are in actuality, terrible for the private sector.
> "Unions have outlived their usefulness in the American economy."
I used to think this way; even having grown up in and around Detroit. But it only takes a few years of actually paying attention to continued corporate abuse of employees -- numerous cases of flagrant violations of labor law and regulations -- to realize that's completely wrong.
All unions are not the UAW or Teamsters any more than all companies are Enron and Merrill Lynch.
But those of us who don't get a sweet union deal have to live with a bankrupt state of California that can't negotiate their union labor contracts, a broken school system run by the country's most powerful union that resists all reform (except "more money for schools"!), bankrupt unionized automakers, a stale unionized postal system that is going broke, and even union grocery stores with long lines because the union resists putting in automatic checkout machines that they fear would take their jobs.
All but your very last example[1] are unionized public employees. They work for you and me, the taxpayer. I can't even begin to comprehend how unions in this sector have ever been a benefit to the economy or the public.
I find it outrageous that it was ever allowed to happen, since, evidenced by your own viewpoint and conclusion, it has utterly eroded what unionization stands for.
I agree that unionized industrial labor was a good idea in 1900. I don't think unionized public employees were ever a good idea. Isn't this kind of corruption the stuff of revolutions? "Taxation without representation" is what it appears to amount to.
In the private sector, unions might still make sense as a hedge against corporate exploitation of workers, as other commentors have pointed out. They also might not. Your grocery store example I've seen here in the Bay Area, and the market is quite unforgiving to a business with such slim margins.
[1] The automakers are a pretty muddled situation, though the US government now owns enough of GM that I'd consider it little different from the postal service.
Maybe they put their entire fate in the faith of the union, whereas under normal circumstances, they would have used their heads? It's an important question.
> ... and how much of a corporations tax-deductible costs can go to C-level salaries instead of everyone else's salaries, much of the need for unions would go away.
Something like that was already instituted under Bill Clinton - corporations can't deduct more than $1 million of an executive's salary. That was actually a big part of why compensation shifted to stock options - I don't think that was a good shift, myself. CEO's and high level executives now make a lot more short term decisions than they used to when they got, say, $6 million in salary and a dramatically smaller option pool. Back then their main concern was keeping the business running smoothly to ensure their jobs. Now it's all about getting the stock price up as much as possible in the short term, often with disastrous results. Also, executive compensation actually went up as a result of the shift to stock options... it's ironic that the government trying to limit executive compensation helped stimulate an increase in executive compensation. Unforseen secondary effects can be funny like that.
> ...much of the need for unions would go away.
Much of the need for unions has gone away, but unions do not voluntarily close shop. Do you think they would do so? It hasn't happened yet...
